


Three Odd Socks

by gnimaerd



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 18:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5712286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The fatherly commitment is rather admirable, John, but she’s not an ordinary child, is she?” Alice asks, “she’s been in a great deal of trouble. I’ve seen some of her films."<br/>John sighs, “well just – next time. Resist getting out the knife, yeah?”<br/>She salutes. “Brownie’s honour.”<br/> +++</p><p>Sometime between S2 and S3, Alice Morgan realises that John Luther cannot be trusted to adequately take care of himself, let alone a teenage girl, and moves in with him and Jenny. Together they become a family, but not before someone loses an ear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Odd Socks

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a really old piece - I wrote it way back in 2011 just as S2 had finished but for reasons now lost to the sands of time, never posted it anywhere. With the show being back again I was reminded I should really put it up somewhere before I forget about it!

 

 

Alice turns up two weeks later. To be fair, John’s a little surprised it took her that long. But apparently she got stuck in Brazil.

 

“There was some trouble with a stripper,” is all she says, adding, after a moment’s pause, “I saw to it. Don’t worry.”

 

“I never worry about you,” John replies, which is and isn’t true.

 

Alice is wearing a grey knee-length skirt, a white blouse, a grey blazer and bright red beret tipped artfully to one side, when she knocks on his door late one Tuesday night. She is slightly damp from the mist outside and her hair is threaded with gleaming pearls of moisture. She looks as if she belongs in a library or a museum. Then she smiles like a viper and John is oddly relieved.

 

She’s carrying a black duffle bag which, as it turns out, contains the rest of her wardrobe, three knives, a long distance rifle, the complete works of Shakespeare, a pig foetus in a jar, her laptop and a text book on astrophysics. There are also precisely three odd socks.

 

“It always seems such a waste to throw them away,” she tells John, as she’s laying them out on his dresser in the midst of unpacking the rest of her things. “It’s not as if they’re defective, you see – it’s their partners who have abandoned them to rot in their drawers. I mean, what an odd thing anyway – to have something which is only useful in a pair. I can’t throw away odd gloves, either.”

 

John stands in the entrance to his bedroom, watching her. “So you’re just moving in, then?”

 

“Well obviously you can’t be trusted to look after yourself,” She quirks her head at him, “it’s been all of six weeks, you know – and there you are threatening to light yourself on fire for an organisation – a country, a people, a government – that cares so little about you it’s left you living in a hovel in a concrete desert and is currently sapping your pension to clear a national debt created by bankers. No, John. You can’t do this on your own. I see that now.”

 

She dumps her underwear in on top of his and that’s that.

 

“There’s a girl living here,” she assesses, the moment she has stepped into his living room. “Not even a woman – a girl.”

 

She’s spotted Jenny’s scuffed up pink converse, liberally redecorated with glittery nail varnish; and probably the place is starting to smell like her hairspray. There’s Jenny’s leather jacket tossed over the arm of the sofa, and a lip-gloss stained cigarette, which John has banned her form smoking in the flat, hastily stubbed out on the coffee table.

 

God Jenny has got everywhere, hasn’t she? Seeing it through Alice’s eyes John begins to wonder when the hell he got used to living with a teenager.

 

“Are you sleeping with her?” Alice asks, prowling around the sofa towards the window, tracing Jenny’s finger prints on the glass.

 

“No,” John replies, “it’s not like that. Sit down, would you? You’re making me nervous.”  


“Don’t I always?” The viper-smile is back but John only snorts and opens the fridge – finds wine and a pair of respectable looking glasses.

 

He tells her about Jenny, as she stretches out her legs on the sofa – filling in the gaps left by his last conversation with her: the names and addresses of who to go after in the event that anything happen to either of them. He sits under her knees, and rests a tentative hand on her thigh, as he would lie it on the body of a dosing crocodile. Alice is quiet until he has finished, and then she explains about Brazil – as much as she ever explains about anything – and tells him about swimming with sharks.

 

John has missed her.

 

Jenny emerges from her bedroom at about three in the morning. She woke the moment she heard the knock at the door (she never sleeps very deeply – she and John have that in common) and has been lying in the dark, trying to work out who the fuck John is being so matey with at this time of night. He doesn’t get girls round. He’s not like that. But she can’t make out anything the woman’s saying through the thin flat walls – her voice is too low, and smooth like silk. Jenny has heard women with voices like that before. They’re never good people.

 

“Who’s this?” She asks, wrapped up in her dressing gown, narrowing hazy eyes at the redhead who’s sprawled all over John like a bad smell.

 

“This is Alice,” John tells her, steady and patient like a primary school teacher, “Alice – Jenny.”

 

“Your little trouble maker,” Alice remarks, mildly, and Jenny hates her.

 

“Alice as in that – psycho killer girl you called up?” She asks, “the one who’s gonna come and – fuck everyone up if anything happens to us?”

 

Alice looks rather pleased by this description. She gets up and offers Jenny her hand with a grin that's absolutely fucking sinister. " _Enchanté_." 

 

“Alice,” John warns, and Alice drops her hand, like a scolded puppy.

 

“What’s she doing here?” Jenny asks. New men turning up in the middle of the night at her mum’s were never the start of anything good.

 

“Alice is… going to stay with us for a while,” John replies. “I think.”  


“Until little John here can learn to fend for himself,” Alice puts in, light and breezy and still absolutely fucking sinister.

 

“Where’s she sleeping then?” Jenny wants to know – no way this psycho in a skirt is getting her room.

 

“With John, of course,” Alice replies, sitting back down on the sofa and extending her legs over him like she’s claiming him or something.

  
Right so – Jenny sees how this is. Fucking awesome.

 

“Great,” she rolls her eyes. A psycho killer has moved in to fuck John and Jenny reckons she has about a week before John tells her to get out so him and Alice can go and have their own little life for a couple of months doing whatever freaky thing psychos and cracked coppers do together. Maybe they’ll have loads of little red headed psycho-killer babies.

 

“Jenny,” John stands, pushing Alice’s legs away, “it’s not like – Alice, go to bed. Get some sleep. You haven’t slept since Brazil. Jenny, come back here. We need to talk.”

 

Alice pouts – John points her towards the bedroom anyway. “Don’t fuck with Jenny,” he tells her, “she’s been through enough. Go and get some sleep. We’ll work something out in the morning.”

 

Alice goes. Jenny’s a bit impressed.

 

“She’s really fucking creepy,” she tells John, when Alice has gone into the bedroom and closed the door.

 

“Yeah, I know,” John replies.

 

“I can hear you!” Alice informs them, through the bedroom door, and John roars with laughter, then shouts back to her.

 

“Well you _are_ fucking creepy Alice – and Jenny doesn’t even know everything you’ve done yet.”  


Alice sticks her head back round the bedroom door, “oh I’ve done such terrible things, though. I’m sure they’ll make an excellent bed time story.”

 

“Go to sleep, Alice.”

 

“Creep,” says Jenny, to which Alice rolls her eyes.

 

“So is she, like, meant to be my new mum or something?” Jenny deadpans, when Alice has really gone to bed.

 

“No,” John replies – doesn’t comment when Jenny takes a swig from the bottle of wine. He has learned to pick his battles. “She’s just… worried about me, so she’s going to hang about until she sees that I’m alright. It’s what she does.”  


“Sort of like a… really blood thirsty guardian angel?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Shit, man.”  


John laughs, then sobers, and gives Jenny one of those long, hard looks that mean a lecture’s coming.

 

“Jenny – don’t fuck around with Alice, alright?”

 

“Yeah okay. Whatever,” Jenny is already deciding that it’s too early in the morning for John to be pulling his Dad-bullshit. She yawns.

 

“I’m not kidding, Jenny,” John says, quietly, “Alice is dangerous. She’s the most dangerous person you’ll ever meet. She’s more dangerous than me – she’s more dangerous than those guys who were out beating people to death for a lark a couple of weeks back. She’s on my side but that isn’t always a good thing. She still hasn’t decided how she feels about you.”  
  
“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean – ” Luther sighs, shakes his head, “Alice is here to protect me. If she thinks you’re a problem, she’ll decide to get rid of you. And if she decides to do that, nothing – not me, not any higher power – is going to stop her. So do not fuck with Alice. Do you understand?”

 

Jenny chews her lip. “You’re saying she could just – like – kill me?”

 

“Yeah,” John replies, evenly, “she could. And I could try and stop her, and that would piss her off, and then everybody loses, trust me.”

 

“Thought she was meant to be your friend?”

 

“That doesn’t make her yours.”

 

John does not have sex with Alice. He has drawn a line – and fuck knows lines in the sand don’t tend to last long with him, but this one he’d have to sink a lot lower to cross. Not as low as he’d have to sink to sleep with Jenny. But low, nonetheless. He’s not there. He hopes he never gets there.

 

Fact is, he’s seen how Alice kills. He doesn’t want to know how she fucks.

 

Sometimes he wonders if she’s ever actually had sex. He asks her, but she only laughs and says that that would be telling.

 

He suspects that it’s something that, like every other supposedly normal human experience, is different for her. He can imagine her luring boys (maybe girls, too) back to her room as a bored teenager – keeping notebooks documenting her experiences. A scientist, viewing everything down the scope of her sociopathic detachment, curious but not engaged. Giving up when she found other ways to amuse herself (perhaps killing small animals, lighting fires).

 

Alice seems to like being close to him. When he climbs into bed next to her at night, she wraps herself around him like a jungle cat on a favourite tree branch – like she’s peering smugly down at the rest of her kingdom from her comfortable place in his arms.

 

John is unsure whether or not he likes this. Sometimes it feels like she’s strangling him. It’s too much like a characture of how he used to sleep with Zoe. And he never thinks about Zoe – not ever.

 

But sometimes… sometimes it’s nice. She’s warm and soft and smells good, for a jungle cat.

 

Beyond that she doesn’t seem to want much. She doesn’t attempt to kiss him again. Instead she comes in like some sort of antisocial Mary Poppins and begins to rip apart his flat, demanding that he acquire better curtains, wallpaper that isn’t pealing and crockery that isn’t chipped. She is used, she informs him, to a certain standard of living, and if he’s going to insist on using her as protection from the enemies he keeps making, she’s going to insist on him housing her adequately.

 

John thinks this is fair enough. It seems he has learned to pick his battles with both the women in his life.

 

And besides, Alice earns her keep.

 

Technically, she’s still on the run, so she can’t get above-board work, which is a pity, since her many PhDs would get her a very cushy academic job and keep all three of them nicely thank you very much. But she seems to do a lot of semi-legal things for people over the internet (not porn – John suspects she’s hacking things she shouldn’t be – government things – he doesn’t ask) and suddenly they have a new TV, new curtains, new wallpaper put up by professionals, and Alice presents Jenny with a new laptop.

 

“Can I sell it?” Jenny asks.

 

“If you’d like,” Alice replies.

 

Teenagers are not challenging for sociopaths.

 

“But you might find it more useful if you take some open university courses on it or something,” Alice goes on, airily. “Qualifications will make you richer in the long run.”  


Jenny does not sell the laptop, although John highly doubts that she is taking open university courses on it. Jenny doesn’t even have A-levels – but she won’t go to college to get them and she doesn’t want a normal job. John is worried she might try porn again (via the laptop).

 

“Oh don’t worry,” Alice replies, when he voices this concern to her in bed one night, “I put nanny spyware on it. She can’t do anything we can’t see, and I’ve blocked her access to adult websites. She can’t even look up the definition of sex on wikipedia – besides, she hasn’t got a webcam.”

 

“You’re a shockingly efficient parent, Alice.”

 

“Well, you’re the one who’s always reminding her to brush her teeth in the mornings.”

 

Jenny finds another way to amuse herself, and starts meeting up with dodgy blokes. She’s not stupid – she doesn’t bring them home. But she does start IM-ing them on facebook and Alice finds out immediately. She has the foresight to text John before she goes after the first of them. John returns home to find Jenny on the coffee table, screaming, a slimy looking white-collar type staggering about the living room missing an ear and Alice delightedly dancing after him, brandishing a kitchen knife.

 

“That was ever so much fun,” she tells John, when he has taken the knife off her.

 

“Psychotic bitch!” Jenny is still on the coffee table, still screaming, “he was alright! He was gonna take me to Australia!”

 

“I’m not psychotic, my dear,” Alice sighs, “I’m a malignant narcissist. There’s a difference. You really ought to go back to college.”

 

“ _Stuck up stupid filthy cunt whore bloody fucked up fucking piece of shit_ – ”

  
“My, she has a temper.”  


“You have no idea,” John sighs, decides to leave Jenny to swear herself out, and takes Alice into the bathroom to clean her up. She’s blood spattered and eerily content. He suspects this may be as close to post-coital as he’ll ever see her.

 

Jenny’s bloke has taken his ear and gone to A&E, Alice promising that she will find him and take the other if he breathes a word of what actually happened.

 

“You can’t do stuff like that, you know,” he takes a flannel and sponges down her face. She’s got a cut on her forehead.

 

Her eyes follow his fingers. Her tongue darts out, tasting the blood that has speckled her lips.

 

“But it’s a great deal of fun.”

 

“So’s taking drugs, still not a good idea.”  


“Aren’t I meant to be protecting her for you?” She widens her eyes, feigning innocence.

 

“I meant keep an eye on her then tell me when she’s doing stupid shit like seeing dodgy older blokes and taking their money,” John replies, “not heading out and committing violent acts on my behalf – especially not in front of Jenny. She’s seen enough of that shit. She needs to be leading an ordinary life – she’s a kid.”

 

“The fatherly commitment is rather admirable, John, but she’s not an ordinary child, is she?” Alice asks, “she’s been in a great deal of trouble. I’ve seen some of her films.”

 

John sighs, “well just – next time. Resist getting out the knife, yeah?”

 

She salutes. “Brownie’s honour.”

 

He kisses her cheek. “Stay in here. Get cleaned up. I’ll get Jenny off the coffee table.”

 

Jenny refuses to be in the same room as Alice for ten days. Alice is completely unfazed (even a little distantly amused) by this treatment, which of course only infuriates Jenny further.

 

“She’s an _actual_ psycho – I can’t live with her, John.” Jenny is shaking when he gets her off the coffee table. He takes her into her bedroom and then gives her some wine.

 

“You already knew that, Jenny,” he points out, “I told you not to fuck with Alice. She’s dangerous.”

 

“I didn’t fuck with her – I wanted to _fuck_ Dave.”

 

“Dave’s gone,” John retorts, “and so, if you’re smart, will be all those other guys you’ve been chatting to. Stay on the straight and narrow and you’ll be fine. Start messing about and Alice is going to come after whoever you’re messing about with – I can’t control her. You know that.”

 

“I like seeing blokes – they look after me!”  


“What do you think we’re doing in here?” John asks, “we’re looking after you. No more blokes. No more porn. Find a job or go back to college.”

 

“I can’t get into college!”

  
“Alice can help you with that,” John says, “she’s clever with computers – can probably fiddle some admissions stuff and get you in.”

 

Jenny snorts, “I don’t want her help.”  


“I’m not fiddling anything!” Alice informs him, later, “some things are sacred – academics are important.”

  
“So you’ll slice off somebody’s ear but you won’t mess about with some London college’s admission data?” John stares at her from over the top of the paperwork he’s brought back from work to do in bed.

 

Alice is sat next to him, reading an old copy of _Hamlet_ , glasses propped on her nose, cut glittering on her forehead as it slowly scabs over. She looks severe. “If she wants to get into college, she needs to do so on her own merits or she wont get anywhere in life. Hard work, John. If she doesn’t learn that, she’s fucked. Literally.”  


“And where does stabbing people come into that?”

 

The severe look abruptly turns impish. “Work hard, play hard.”

 

John sighs. “You know she stabbed someone? Jenny. Murdered him.”

 

“You told me. That was self-defence, though. It doesn’t count as murder.”  


“So she’s not quite on your level then?”

 

“What on earth are you talking about?”

 

“Nothing. I’ve had a long day. Let’s go to sleep.”

 

She wraps herself around him and this is one of the nights when he enjoys it.

 

“You feel like a freak,” Alice says to Jenny, when she’s helping her with college admissions forms, “the whole world makes you feel like a freak. You’ll feel like one in college – you’ll feel like one everywhere. That shouldn’t stop you going.”

 

“Look who’s talking,” Jenny replies, and John, behind his newspaper, winces.

 

Alice is (as ever) unfazed. “You’re different, Jenny. You’re broken and angry and deeply, deeply traumatised. You’re like a little mini-John Luther, but sexier. And the thing about John Luther is that he can handle anything. I’ve seen it. So you can handle anything too. Now – you really must learn to spell check. They won’t accept text-speak in your personal statement.”

 

“So I’m not as sexy as Jenny,” John lowers his newspaper.

 

“No,” Jenny says, “course not, you’re an old man. I’m young and pretty. And I have better eye-shadow.”

 

“And a great deal more hair,” Alice observes.

 

John laughs.

 

“You aren’t, like, sleeping together, are you?” Jenny asks, when they’re out one day on the weekend, near Southbank. The Thames is rancid in the mid-July heat and there are tourists everywhere, but there is also ice cream and it feels safe here. Or at least, anonymous. John sincerely doubts that he will ever feel safe anywhere again.

 

“I mean, like – you sleep in the same bed and everything. But you aren’t fucking her. I’ve been listening.”

 

“We’re not sleeping together,” John confirms.

 

“That’s just weird though,” Jenny replies, “I mean it’s sort of – I suppose it’s sort of like sweet and stuff. Like sometimes she’s sweet, but in a creepy way. That’s how you both are. You’re like sweet but really creepy. And that doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven her for what she did to Dave’s ear. Do you love her?”

 

“What?” John has been somewhat confused by the way Jenny sometimes talks in circles. Six months of living with her and he still struggles to peel apart her sentences into comprehensible phrases.

 

“Alice,” Jenny intones, rolling his eyes. “Do you love her?”

 

The malignant narcissist in question is some way behind them, sitting on a bench, waiting for them to finish queuing for ice cream. She is wearing a blue summer dress and a wide-brimmed hat, and spent most of that morning coating herself in factor 50 sunscreen. John helped her, patiently rubbing it into her shoulder blades and the back of her neck, whilst Alice did her own arms – Jenny was standing in the kitchen, but sometimes John would catch her looking in at them, wide-eyed and bemused. It’s the closest she’s ever come to witnessing a functional adult relationship.

 

“I dunno,” John tells Jenny, shrugging. “I don’t think I know what that even means these days. Alice is my friend. I look after her. She looks after me. That’s it.”

 

“It’s not though,” Jenny insists, “you two – you’ve got something like… I dunno what. It’s just… I thought the whole world was about sex. That’s how it’s meant to be – everything comes back to sex, really. With everyone else. But not you two. You’re about something else. Cause Alice doesn’t really do sex, does she? Not the way most people do. And you’re like… seriously fucked up anyway. And so with you two – you’re just like. In love. Or something. The way they’re in love in fairy tales – in Disney films. All happily ever after and no fucking.”

 

John chuckles. “I don’t think we’re a fairy tale, Jenny.”  


“Yeah but you sort of are. You know – with more stabbing and stuff.”

 

They buy ice cream and go back and sit with Alice. Alice didn’t want ice cream – she’s lactose intolerant. John has bought her a diet coke, which she puts to her forehead before drinking.

 

They begin to walk again, slowly, though the crowd, following the slow, stinking Thames. John tries not to think about death – blood – murder. Alice is silent and steady at his side – Jenny saunters a little ahead and then a little behind, circling them like a sheepdog and trying to look casual. As if she’s not a little girl frightened of being separated from the most supportive adults she’s ever known.

 

They don’t look like a family. God knows what they look like. Three odd socks, maybe, laid out on top of a dresser, all missing their right partners, if they ever had them to begin with.

 

To keep from losing her, John reaches out, and takes Alice’s hand, cold from the coke can, and Jenny sees, and grins until she realises John’s seen her – then she rolls her eyes and saunters away again.

 

“Isn’t it a lovely day, John?” Alice asks, and then she smiles her viper smile.


End file.
